Addressing the top 70 most viewed QuickBooks Payroll articles by leading a tiger team.
Company
Intuit, QuickBooks Payroll Help
Team
@Me Content Designer
3 Digital Delivery Leaders
1 SEO Manager
2 Content Designers (Support)
11 Writers
1 Analytics Manager
6 Subject Matter Experts
Timeline
Oct 2019 to Jan 2020
Our customers are smart. But that doesn’t mean they're payroll or tax experts. A lot of current help content is overly complex and hovers around the 12th grade reading level. Aiming our reading level to a 5th to 8th grade gives our readers the best chance to understand the content on the page.
Each year, content teams have to do a sweep of the Payroll content. Many of the articles give our users specific details that need to be updated regularly. To ensure our team can sweep efficiently, we created more evergreen content, and “snippet-ized” any line that will need to be changed.
Historically, QuickBooks’ help content was written by subject matter experts who weren’t professional writers. This means that a lot of the content used terms, ideas, and framing devices that most people wouldn’t understand. So instead of writing headlines like “How will Federal banking holidays affect my direct deposit processing?” we went with “ How to adjust your payroll for holidays.”
When we started this project, we’re missing huge data sets, and we couldn’t see important key performance indicators like escalation rates. or contact rates—important metrics to help judge the content’s effectiveness. As a result, we were unable to measure how many people were contacting us to get help with their payroll.
Made with 💛 in my 🌁 living room with support from excellent friends.
© Kyle Stewart 2023 All rights reserved.